


Ningyo

by yarroway



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Cancer Arc, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Terminal Illnesses, Wilson Lives, cancer remission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2268813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarroway/pseuds/yarroway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-finale fic in which the summer's adventure of the road trip is over, and autumn comes (please note that this is NOT a death fic).  Readers should know that I take liberties with folklore here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ningyo

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: House, M.D. belongs to David Shore, Universal Television, Heel and Toe Productions, and a lot of other people who are not me. I'm not making any money from this.
> 
> Thanks: to srsly_yes for her excellent beta. All mistakes are my own.

They settle in a lonely cabin on the Oregon coast. There’s enough room that it doesn’t feel crowded even with the medical equipment Wilson now needs. House, in possession of both a secondhand jeep and a shiny new set of papers proving he is Keith Jagger, has gone on a supply run, and Wilson is sick of lying down.

There’s a dose of oxycodone on the bedside table. House, it turns out, is an excellent nurse when he wants to be. Wilson unhooks himself from the oxygen canula. He gets slowly out of bed. He moves like a 90 year old man-- slowly, stiffly and painfully. But he needs to exercise, and he needs to get the hell out of this cabin every so often. Especially when the knowledge of his own helplessness presses in on him, like it has for the last few months. Like it has ever since he went searching for his beard trimmer yesterday and found something else instead.

The back door creaks when he opens it. A breeze straight off the ocean hits his face. Autumn can get chilly. Wilson zips up his jacket and ties the hood firmly into place. Then he makes his slow way to the beach.

The sea has whitecaps today, and the sand is a treasure trove of things the wind blew in and the tide left behind—shells, seaweed and old, indefinable pieces of wood. He had found debris from the tsunami a few times before. Nothing dramatic enough to make the papers, just junk from across the ocean. He feels a pang for the stranded, abandoned things washed up here on the shore. Soon enough he himself will be an abandoned thing washed away from the shore.

The sky is a steely blue-gray, and it’s warm enough in the sun. Cool sea foam laps at his bare feet. He’s alive, and it’s a beautiful day. Wilson starts walking.

After going a little way he sees something lying on the sand up ahead. Something large. Wilson has a bad feeling about this, like maybe it’s a dead sea lion or a body, and he’d like to quicken his pace to get there faster but he can’t. Just walking at his now-normal slow, laborious pace has him on the verge of a coughing fit. He doesn’t want to pass out alone on the beach with the tide starting to come in. So instead of hurrying Wilson continues on, stopping now and then to catch his breath, and look around for someone able-bodied to come and help. There are a few surfers in the water. Wilson waves, but can’t draw their attention.

When he finally (finally!) gets close enough, Wilson finds that what’s come ashore is a possibly the ugliest fish he’s ever seen. It’s big and lumpy, with a fat head full of sharp teeth. It’s lying there on its side, mouth open and gills wide, trying to breath.

Wilson coughs in sympathy.

The wet sand around the fish is flattened and marked where it tried to thrash its way back to the water. The tide won’t return fast enough for this creature. It’s going to die here very soon, possibly even in the next few moments while Wilson is watching. It looks helplessly at Wilson out of its glassy, fishy eye.

This is the way of things, Wilson reminds himself firmly. Creatures die. Accidents happen. Young and otherwise healthy doctors develop terminal diseases, or infarctions, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Why, then, does he feel ashamed to be standing still while this animal dies?

The fish raises its fin just once, feebly, in protest. Its mouth opens and closes.

Wilson nods, coming to a sudden decision. He grabs the fish by its tail and starts to haul it to the water. It’s not far, but the creature is heavy and Wilson is weak. He has to try, though. He can’t let this thing, this ugly and no doubt vicious creature, die without even trying to help it.

In short order Wilson’s muscles are screaming and his chest is burning and he’s gasping for breath, and he thinks he may just collapse and die right here, but he keeps pulling.

“What the fuck is that?”

There are voices now, strangers very close to him but Wilson keeps his head down and keeps hauling, keeps gasping, and then the load is lighter.

“Watch the teeth.”

They get into the water. Wilson’s dizzy and he knows he should sit down and let these people handle it but he has to see this through. It’s one more life he can save, one last life, and it means as much to him as any of the others. More, because it’s the last.

They’re knee deep in the ocean and the thing gives a wriggle. Wilson lets go and steps aside. Now that he doesn’t have a goal anymore he’s aware of pain. Wilson rubs his chest and coughs.

That was a mistake, he thinks suddenly, urgently, as his lungs spasm and his knees fold and his face nears the water.

“Hey!” he hears someone yell, and the grey-green waters slop at him, and then he’s gone.

***

When Wilson wakes up he’s in an emergency room, and his first thought is of betrayal. House had promised not to send him to a hospital and yet here he is, hooked up to five different kinds of tubes. Then he sees House’s face, pale and tight, and he remembers what happened.

“Hey,” Wilson says.

House doesn’t answer. Wilson knows better than anyone—better than House—what it’s like to find your friend had risked his life for no good reason, had come close to taking himself away from you forever with no care for what pain that would cause. He’s been there all too often. It’s much more fun to be the irresponsible one waking up in the hospital bed than the worried one waiting at his side.

House won’t look at him.

“I’m sorry,” Wilson says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

House stands up abruptly. He tosses a set of papers at Wilson and strides out the door. Wilson would get up and go after him if he could, but those days are gone. Instead he glances at what House has given him.

It’s the packet for a discharge against medical advice.

Wilson bites his lip, embarrassed and grateful all at once. House knew the hospital would want to keep him. He’s sick, after all. And House knew Wilson wasn’t going to let them. He’s saved Wilson a lot of time and trouble, getting these papers to him, because hunting down things hospitals don’t want you to have is always difficult.

***

Much later that night Wilson lies awake in bed. He can hear House’s deep, slow breathing. He does this a lot at night, just lies awake and listens when he can’t sleep.

Time was he’d get up and read email when the pain and fear wouldn’t allow him to rest. He can’t concentrate on things like he used to, though. He has trouble breathing and that leaves him dizzy and confused sometimes. Little things take a toll. He tires easily, but he still can’t sleep. So he lies in bed and tries to rest, tries to take his mind from the certainty that things will only get worse, and listens to the night.

He knows the occasional roar of a car headed down the coastal road. The rustle of the wind in the shrubs. The way it taps on the window and sometimes rattles the sash. He knows the hum of their refrigerator. Beneath it all, always, he’s aware of the sea’s murmurs. Tonight there’s a new sound, very far away. It sounds like singing. A woman singing.

House must have left the television on. Wilson considers getting up to turn it off, but the song is so beautiful and he’s so weak and woozy that he doesn’t. Listening to the woman’s wordless croon, he finally drifts into sleep.

***

At breakfast House is still angry. He rattles pans and scrubs the counters. When the kitchen is scoured Hurricane House blows into the living room, tossing books and magazines around and beating the dust out of cushions.

“I get it. You’re angry.”

House chucks a loafer past his head.

Wilson sighs and puts down his uneaten toast. “Come here where I can talk to you.”

“Why would I want to do that?” House spits. He doesn’t come near, but he keeps talking. They’ve gotten past the point of sulking for days between conversations. They don’t have enough days left for that. “What’s wrong? Is my cleaning disturbing your breakfast? No, clearly not, because you’re not eating. You nearly killed yourself yesterday saving a fish, which was probably sick anyway or it would never have beached itself. But you won’t even try to eat this morning. You put more effort into helping a dying animal than into taking care of yourself.”

“No,” Wilson starts, aggravated. “That’s--”

“You treated a fish as more important than you. Worse, you treated it as more important than me.”

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” Wilson says. “Thou art House, my friend. I shall have no other friends before thee.”

House swallows. He says, very softly, “I thought you loved me.”

Wilson’s anger flees. He stares at the floor. “House.” His voice cracks. This is his chance to explain what House couldn’t stand to hear yesterday. “What I did, it wasn’t about you. I just—I had one last chance to make a difference, no matter how small or stupid. I can’t save myself and _clearly_ I can’t save you, but I saved that…that thing. It’s alive now, today, because of me. It has a chance to continue after I’m gone," Wilson pauses here and looks House in the eye. "Even if you won't."

House has gone completely still. “You found the gun.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not what you think,” House says, but Wilson interrupts him.

“Are you going to tell me that it’s a prop?” Wilson’s voice is vicious. He hadn’t realized he was so angry, and what makes it worse is he knows it's only because he’s so scared. There is nothing, _nothing_ , that he can do, and maybe part of the reason he’d pushed himself so hard yesterday was that he wanted House to see what it was like to be in his shoes for once. Wanted just for once to have House be the one worried and helpless and not knowing what to do.

House looks vaguely apologetic. “It was my father’s. Well, my not-father’s. The first one.”

“Great, so you’ll go out with his gun in your mouth. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

House sighs. “I brought it because he was proud of it. Not as some kind of backwards Oedipal exit strategy.”

Wilson nods tightly. He believes House but he can’t let the idea go. “So you’re not planning to kill yourself after I die?”

“Disappointed?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“If I said no, would you believe me?”

Wilson’s heart sinks. “That’s still not an answer.”

There’s a pause. House says, “I haven’t decided. I can’t know until it happens.”

Wilson nods again. He can’t seem to stop doing that though he doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to. Not this, not House’s brains splattered all over the walls, not House with a horse-doctor’s dose of morphine in his arm or jumping from a balcony or sticking a knife in the electrical outlet in the kitchen or walking into the ocean with stones in his shoes or driving off a cliff or goading a thug into killing him.

“I want you to live,” Wilson says. What he wants never mattered enough before but maybe this one time it will. Maybe he can keep House going long enough for him to find something to cling to after Wilson is gone.

“I want you to live,” House echoes. “But you can’t always get what you want.” Then he’s gone. The front door bangs behind him. Wilson hears House rev his motorcycle, hears it pull away.

The little house is empty without him. Wilson looks down at his breakfast. The egg is repulsive. The toast is cold. He chokes down his tepid green tea and throws the rest away.

***

It’s been hours since House left. Wilson’s lying on the couch not listening for the purr of House’s engine and trying to interest himself in daytime TV. His hand rests on his chest, pressed against the worst of the pain. It doesn’t help.

He had a cup of instant noodle soup for lunch. He’d wanted to chop up some vegetables to put in it but today is a bad day. He feels heavy and stupid. He can’t stand for long without coughing, and that makes his chest hurt even more.

Wilson forces himself to sit up. He needs the oxygen, which is in the bedroom, and he needs his next dose of medicine, which is in the kitchen. It’ll be easier to do things once he can breathe a little better, so he decides to head for the oxygen first and oxycodone next. Oxygen and oxycodone. For the first time the similarity in names strikes him as funny.

He gets to his feet, a creaking old man walking slow and unsteady to the next room. He’s dizzy, but the wall catches him when he starts to fall. He leans on it. The bathroom is on the left and the bedroom is on the right, and the linens and supplies are straight ahead. Wilson turns right. The O2 canister sits on its wheeled trolley, waiting patiently for him to come and hook it up and turn it on. He’ll feel so much better once he’s got oxygen flowing into him, but right now he has to sit down. He’s not even going to make it to the bed first. He can’t remember right now which bed is whose, but it doesn’t matter because he can’t reach either of them.

Wilson sinks down to the floor. He’s shaking with exertion and he has to cough again. When he finishes it’s several minutes later and his chest is on fire and his throat hurts. Wilson tries to take slow breaths. His chest is heavy, he’s heavy, this thing in him is dragging him face first to the floor. It’s going to plant him in the ground very soon now and it’ll keep growing even after he’s dead, sprout a big tumor-tree over his grave and invade everything around him.

He’ll have to remember to tell House to burn him into ashes. Cremate, that’s the word. He needs to be cremated.

Who is he kidding? It’s been hours. House isn’t coming back.

Wilson knows, allows himself to know, the truth. House is gone. Wilson is alone here. He can call for help and go to a hospital, which isn’t what he wants and besides, he’d need his cell and he’s not sure where it is. Or he can die here slowly of dehydration and starvation, because he doesn’t think he’s getting up off this floor anytime soon. Or he can crawl (he’ll make it eventually) back out to the kitchen and take the new bottle of oxy and just end this now. Or as soon to now as he can get there. Which might just be after he’s dead, which makes the whole idea stupid and funny as hell. But he doesn’t want to die. Even now, even here, alone and dying anyway, he won’t let go of life. It’ll have to be torn from him.

No, if he can crawl to the kitchen he can damn well make it to the oxygen. Wilson gets to his hands and knees. The floor is hard against his aching body. He has to stop to cough again when he’s part way there. He feels blood in his throat. All that coughing must have torn a blood vessel, he thinks and he spits, and spits again. His eyes are tearing from the pain and he can’t stop coughing. Then he hears the bang of the front door and House’s uneven tread. Did he forget something? Or did he come back to take some of their drugs with him? Wilson tries to call out but his mouth is full of blood.

House grabs him and hauls him up against the wall, so he’s sitting with his back resting against it. Wilson is so grateful to him for being here. He’ll hand House every last painkiller if he’ll only stay. He grabs House’s arm, but he knows House can break away if he wants to. House fits the nasal tubes into him and holds them in place. Wilson wonders why House doesn’t just hang the tubing around his ears. Then he realizes it’s because he has a death grip on House’s right arm. He forces himself to let go, one reluctant finger at a time. Freed, House adjusts the canula. Then he rests one hand on Wilson’s arm. It’s only then, when he’s feeling a little better and House is there and not angry any more, that Wilson realizes just how bad he must look, pale and gasping, with blood on his chin and tears of pain on his cheeks.

House lets him be for a few minutes. Long enough for Wilson to control himself. At least he’s alive enough to still do that. Then House squeezes his shoulder and gets to his feet.

He returns with the nebulizer and Wilson’s missed dose of oxycodone. Wilson swallows the pills and allows House to remove the oxygen and put the nebulizer mask over his face instead. House starts the treatment. Wilson closes his eyes.

Ten minutes later the treatment has run its course. Wilson is back on oxygen and feeling like he could fall asleep right here. House sits beside him on the floor and wipes Wilson’s face clean.

“So what happened?” House asks.

“Waited too long to get the oxygen.”

House nods. “You were punishing me.”

Wilson has known House long enough to recognize a question when he doesn’t hear it. “No. I thought you’d left for good. I just screwed up the timing.”

House huffs, just a puff of air with a laugh attached.

“That’s funny?”

“You’re funny. You told me before that the fish thing wasn’t about me, and then you immediately told me it was about finding Dad’s gun and what you thought that meant. Which means it was about me. And now you’re telling me that this had nothing to do with me either when we both know it does. Sooner or later you’re going to have to be honest about how you feel.”

“You first,” Wilson says, annoyed.

“Okay,” House says easily, and Wilson has the sinking feeling he’s just been played. “You saved Fishzilla. Your life has been worthwhile. It still is worthwhile. And,” here he pauses, and Wilson suspects he’s trying to get Wilson to look at him, so he keeps his gaze stubbornly on the floor.

“And I love you,” House finishes softly.

They are not touching. They are not touching anywhere and Wilson wishes they were but he can’t move, himself, and he knows he’d hate it if House did. He tries to say the words back to House. They’re true, and that makes them heavy, and there are too many heavy things inside him right now and he can’t cut loose of any of them.

Wilson smiles at House and hopes House can hear the things he’s saying silently. He’d try again but the drug is pulling him down. At the edge of sleep he hears the singing again, same as last night. He wonders if he’s hallucinating.

***

Two days pass. Two days of House hovering. Two days of being watched in the bath, of being fed carefully crafted meals and having everything he might want brought to him before he realizes he wants it. Two days of House being nice.

The third day is a good one. He and House take a short walk on the beach. Fishzilla hasn’t washed back up.

Wilson feels good enough that they go into town for dinner. They play a round of pool. The locals look at them strangely because Wilson has his oxygen with him, but no one hassles them.

That night House falls asleep quickly. As usual when he isn’t drugged into insensibility, Wilson lies awake in bed. He’s just starting to drowse when he hears the singing again.

Wilson gets up. It’s not the television. It’s not the radio. It’s not the radios in their cars. In fact the singing is harder to hear from in front of their cabin. The sound is coming from the beach.

Wilson has a vision of an a cappella group practicing out there when they think it’s deserted. They’re good.

Wilson opens the back door and immediately discards that notion. The beach is dark, except for the moon. There’s no one there, but the singing is louder. How is that possible? Does he have a metastasis in his brain that’s hitting some weird auditory circuit?

He should get House, but the song—it’s so beautiful that he wants to stay just a little longer. He stands still, listening to the mystery woman sing her wordless song, and doesn’t realize he’s moved until the water covers his ankles.

Wilson stops. He was wearing sandals when he came out here, but they’re gone now. He’s naked in the water. When did he undress? Is this a dream? He’s shivering in the cold. He needs to get back to the beach, but instead he’s up to his thighs and the singing is louder, clearer, the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard in his life. He wants more.

There’s a woman in the sea. She stands in the moonlight, singing wordlessly. Wilson wades out to her. The water is up to his chest. The woman sways, and Wilson’s breath catches. She’s swimming topless.

He moves closer. Her features are Asian. Her black hair is held on top of her head with sticks of jade. Her arms reach out to him. She stops singing and smiles. It’s got real affection in it, that smile, and gratitude, which confuses Wilson until she pulls him into her embrace and all thought vanishes from his mind. His hands trace her face, her back, her fins, her tail. She pushes his head down and shows him what to do.

When it’s over he rests against her. She brings him close to shore with lazy strokes of her powerful tail, and waits while he stumbles back onto dry land. She is still there when he straightens up with his clothes wrapped around him. She raises one hand in what Wilson fears is farewell. He copies her gesture. Then, feeling awkward with his arm in the air, he blows her a kiss. She looks puzzled but mimics his gesture perfectly. She starts singing again. Then she turns and swims west, out to sea. Wilson stares after her until he can no longer hear her song.

***

It’s cold, and Wilson isn’t thinking of anything other than drying off and warming up. It isn’t until he’s halfway home that he realizes the lights are on.

Damn.

The back door is open. He can make out something vaguely House-shaped, leaning on a cane and watching him.

“Had an urge for a midnight stroll? What is it with you and that beach?”

There’s nothing for Wilson to say to that, so he doesn’t answer. He walks past House into the cabin, hangs his wet clothes on the veranda to dry, and towels off. As he’s putting on sweats House comes into the bedroom.

“Seriously,” House says. “What were you doing?”

“You’ll never believe me, but I was having sex with a mermaid.”

“Wilson,” House protests.

“I know how it sounds, but it was real and no, I don’t want to talk about it. Now I’m tired and I’m going to bed.” He pushes past House and lies down. Under the blanket he warms up. His breathing is easier than it’s been in ages, and in moments he is asleep.

When he wakes it’s to find House sprawled asleep in a chair at his bedside. Wilson gets up quietly, hoping not to wake him. He makes his way to the bathroom and showers. The hot water feels good. He steps out and trims his beard and moustache for the first time in days. Wilson notices that the swelling in his face and neck has gone down. Feeling almost human, he steps into the kitchen to grab his morning dose of painkillers. He stops with the pills halfway to his mouth, and puts them back.

He’s not in any pain yet. He’ll hold off on the pills for now. Wilson grabs a slice of bread to toast—toast is one of the few things he can stomach reliably. But he isn’t in the mood for plain toast. Wilson searches through the kitchen, trying to decide what to eat. His gaze falls on the back door. It’s got a new lock on it, one Wilson doesn’t have a key for. One of those backwards locks used with dementia patients that has to be keyed before the door can be opened from within. Curious, Wilson abandons his foraging to examine the front door. That, too, has a new lock.

Wilson smiles. House has been busy. No wonder he’s still asleep. Wilson wonders when he’d gotten the locks. If he rode out last night for them, or if he had them for a while, just in case. He may not be able to tell House he loves him, but he can cook a breakfast House will love.

As he stirs ingredients together some things start to connect in his brain about last night. About her. The oddly familiar feel of her. The fishy taste. The way she would do anything, allow anything, but she wouldn’t put her mouth on him. The momentary glimpse of strong, jagged teeth.

He had really…? It’s as believable that he went down on Fishzilla as it is that he did it to a mermaid. At least other people saw the fish, reacted to her. She was real. Was the rest of his experience real, or was he dreaming, or suffering from brain involvement in his fast-growing cancer?

He doesn’t know. He’s suddenly glad for those locks.

By the time House enters the kitchen, bacon is sizzling and coffee is dripping and the sour cream coffee cake Wilson’s aunt taught him to make is ready. House accepts a mug of coffee and a plate heaped high with food. Wilson joins him. They eat in silence.

“You’re feeling energetic this morning,” House comments, gesturing to his now empty plate. It’s an opening salvo. House is worried and he’s right, but there’s nothing Wilson can do.

“I feel good. I want to enjoy it for however long it lasts.” He’s thinking that sometimes, right before the end, patients experience a bout of increased energy and euphoria. He’s pretty sure House is too. “I’m sorry about last night. I think I was sleepwalking. Or hallucinating.”

House’s eyes are haunted, full of dread. “I want to run some scans.”

“Yeah,” Wilson says. They need to know what they’re facing. House needs to know what to expect. This kind of thymoma is rare enough, atypical enough, that Wilson can’t predict how it will behave. House lurches to his feet. Wilson stops him.

“If it is what you suspect, it’s not the worst way to go.”

House doesn’t answer that. He looks at Wilson a long time. Then his chin sinks to his chest and he goes to shower.

Wilson sighs. The scan will tell them exactly what is going on, and he isn’t sure he wants to know.

***

Wilson has an old girlfriend from his med school days who lives nearby. Nicole is safely married now with four kids, all grown except the last one. She runs a clinic the next town over. She and Wilson have a deal. She gave him the keys and codes to use her clinic’s oldest machines, the ones she almost hopes will break so she can justify buying new ones. In return for the private use of her equipment, Wilson consults with her for free whenever she wants. It’s a good deal for both of them.

House does an MRI of Wilson’s brain and another of his chest. They don’t talk about what the results will mean, but the haunted look is back in House’s eyes.

Wilson tries to relax as the MRI machine bangs and whirrs and groans. It’s stupid to be any more afraid now than he was yesterday. Nothing important has changed, just the details of his body’s inexorable march towards ruin.

As the machine works, House reads aloud from the newspaper. There’s an article about a local man who robbed a restaurant but dropped his driver’s license on the floor when he fled. There’s a cow who, her owner swears, can count. House has fun with that one.

“It won’t make a difference,” Wilson says, interrupting House’s recitation of his horoscope. “Whatever the results are. They won’t change anything.”

House doesn’t answer. Wilson racks his brain for a suitable joke and comes up empty. House doesn’t continue reading, and now Wilson wishes he hadn’t spoken. There was something comforting about House’s voice rumbling to him about lunar conjunctions and the influence of Jupiter.

The silence between them stretches on. It’s lonely in here. There’s no sound of life, no sense of presence, just the leaching cold and for one wild, sinking moment Wilson wonders if he’s dead. Then the MRI tray slides out. Wilson scrambles down.

House’s voice says, “Get in here.”

Wilson opens the door to the observation room. House is staring at the screens. Wilson steps forward to see how bad the news is.

The chest views are clear.

“What?”

House looks at him. “They’re all like that. Chest, throat, lungs, brain. All clear.”

“That can’t be right,” Wilson says, shaking his head. This isn’t possible. “There’s been a mistake.”

“No mistake,” House says. “That’s your name on the scan, and today’s date.”

“The machine must be malfunctioning. It’s old.”

House patted a blue folder on the counter beside him. “Maintenance log says it was in good working order two days ago. Of course it could have broken down since then, and since we’re not technicians, and we don’t have any other cases to run, there’s no way to test it. But symptoms don’t lie. How are yours?”

Wilson can’t begin to parse that question. Obviously, the machine is broken. Clearly. Obviously. House is just grasping at straws.

“Did you take any pain killers today?” House asks.

“No, but that doesn’t mean--”

“You ate breakfast. You had more this morning than all day yesterday, and I know you were pushing yourself to eat then. You haven’t coughed once since you came in from your little swim last night. You haven’t used oxygen since then either.”

Wilson is shaking his head. He can’t believe this. He can’t afford to believe this. If he allows himself to hope, even for a second, the truth will crush him.

“You’re moving better. Your color’s good. You have more energy. You told me you felt good.”

“Don’t do this to me,” Wilson pleads.

House pauses. “All right. We’ll take X-rays. Let’s go get some lead aprons.”

There’s no extraneous chatter this time, just House’s terse instructions as he arranges Wilson the way he wants him. They wait together for the films to develop.

The cancer is gone.

Wilson holds on to the desk he’s sitting at, waiting for the world to quit spinning. House says something, but his heart is beating too loudly to hear. He’s not sure he knows how to live without cancer. He’s afraid to try. What if it recurs? If he trusts this remission and then his disease comes back…

“If you need to cry I can step out for a minute,” House says.

Wilson laughs shakily. There are tears in his eyes, but neither he nor House will acknowledge them.

“Everything in these last few months has been about me dying. I don’t think I remember how not to do that,” he says.

“Weird, isn’t it?” House asks. “You think your life is going a certain way. Maybe not the way you wanted or the way you hoped, but you get used to things the way they are no matter how much they suck. Then there’s a change and you don’t know who you are anymore if your chest doesn’t hurt. Or your leg. If you don’t need drugs to get through your day. And the part of you that believes the worst tells you that if you get used to this new reality, it’ll just be ripped away. “

Wilson sighs. This isn’t about the ketamine. The two situations aren’t the same, and even if they were, he isn’t House. He’s entitled to his own feelings and his own experiences. But on the other hand, his infuriating, egocentric friend is right. That’s exactly how Wilson feels.

“My advice, for what it’s worth—enjoy what you have while you have it. There’s never any guarantees, and things can always get worse.”

Wilson has to laugh. “That’s your advice? Your words of wisdom? Things can always get worse? Well, thank you, Pollyanna.”

House looks indignant, but Wilson doesn’t give him time to reply. He starts whistling 'Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.'

House growls as he gathers up the X-ray films. Wilson locks up behind him.

“You know what this means,” House says as he gets into the driver’s side of the jeep. “We have to decide what we’re doing with the rest of our lives.”

Wilson slides in beside him. He’s not in any pain. His chest feels light. His whole body feels light. They have a cabin on the beach and gas in the bikes, and Wilson will happily go wherever House wants to go and do almost anything House wants to do.

 _I love you_ , he thinks. What he says is, “It’s up to you.”

“Because now that you aren’t dying you’re back to not being able to stand up for the things you want?”

Wilson shakes his head. He doesn’t know the answer to that in general, but he knows this. “Because I already have everything I need.”

House glances over at him uncertainly. Whatever he sees in Wilson’s face seems to reassure him, because a brilliant smile spreads across his face.

“Cool,” House says. He eases the jeep back onto the road and points it toward home.


End file.
